Venu Srinivasan, Ajay Piramal join Tata Sons board

Ajay Piramal, chairman, Piramal and Shriram groups, and Venu Srinivasan, chairman, TVS Motor and Sundaram Clayton joined the board of Tata Sons Ltd, the holding company of the Tata group of companies, as non-executive directors effective Thursday.

Billionaires Piramal, 61, and Srinivasan, 63, will join the high profile board, which has Ishaat Hussain, former CFO, Tata Sons, Vijay Singh, former defence secretary of India, Nitin Nohria, the dean of Harvard Business School, Ronen Sen, former Indian ambassador to the US, and Farida Khambata, global strategist, Cartica, as other directors. Cyrus Mistry is the chairman of the Tata Sons board.

When contacted, Srinivasan declined to comment on his appointment. Piramal was not immediately available for comment as he was abroad. Srinivasan’s wife, Mallika Srinavasan, 56, is already a director on the board of Tata Steel and Tata Global Beverages.

The appointment of two top Indian industrialists on the board of Tata Sons signifies the group’s move to bring in more experienced talent at the holding company level at a time when the $103-billion revenue group is facing headwinds with a few of its group companies like Tata Steel’s European operations and Tata Teleservices.

Both Tata and Piramal groups are building financial services business separately and are competing. Srinivasan, the maker of TVS brand of two-wheelers, and the Tatas do not compete directly.

Analysts say the choice of both is good as both have immense experience in running businesses in India.

Take for example, Piramal, an alumnus of Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management. He had sold his pharmaceutical business to Abbott in 2010 for $3.72 billion, and is, since then, building a real estate empire, apart from investing in the financial services business of the Chennai-based Shriram group. Piramal also invested in Vodafone India Limited and exited with a hefty profit in 2014. “The Piramals and the Mistry family are close and have common interest in real estate and construction business,” said a Mumbai-based corporate analyst.

Srinivasan, an alumnus of College of Engineering, Chennai, and Purdue University, served as the president of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) for 2009-10, the president of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) for from 1999 to 2001, and the chairman of the National Safety Council of the Government of India

The appointment will strengthen Mistry, who, at the recent summit of Tata group CEOs in Mumbai, said by 2025, the group will become amongst the 25 most-admired corporate and employer brands globally, with a market capitalisation comparable to the 25 most-valuable companies in the world. In the last three years, the group has invested more than $28 billion — making it one of the biggest investors in India.

The group currently earns 69 per cent of its revenues from its global operations and is selling non-core assets across the world. The Tatas are also gearing up to invest in the defence business which has been identified as a core business for investment by Mistry.